You're talking about political scrutiny long after it has survived serious scientific scrutiny. As far as usefulness, I don't know about other disciplines, but evolution has been helpful to computer science. Look up evolutionary algorithms, specifically genetic algorithms.
Actually I was referring to public scrutiny. No one really cares until they see they are paying for it. Then they want some ‘return on investment ‘ (ROI). I will grant you that genetic evolutionary algorithms have proven useful but the ROI is very very poor.
I saw in your next post - 53 I think - that you think it is wrong to indoctrinate children w/ creation science in public schools.
I agree 100% but to teach evolution in public school is problematic for the same reasons. The main reason I agree is the church can and should do a much better job teaching creation science since they should be held to a much higher standard of truth and avoiding politics. Also I feel that the public schools would mis-represent and grossly distort creation science anyway. I see it all the time on these threads w/ folks who lack any real theological reasoning.
They often think the Bible is merely written from the minds of men, but to their own detriment they ignore the uniqueness of God’s Word. Try explaining how Psalm 22 written approx 1000 years before Jesus Christ was foretold by mere men.
At a minimum the school needs to have a frank and open discussion about its’ strengths and weaknesses to separate fact from fiction.
Strengths = micro-evoltion (leading to the algorithms you stated previously), genetic code allowing for increased diversity of species.
Weaknesses = Cambrian explosion of most lifeforms, stasis in the fossil record, limitations for mutations in the genetic code, etc.